MTV struggles to keep the attention of its young audience

The internet poses the biggest threat to the channel as it hits 25. But cool new rivals are also moving in

TWENTY-FIVE years ago this month a few thousand late-night cable-TV watchers in northern New Jersey witnessed the start of a revolution in music and television.

Over a crunching guitar riff, doctored footage of the Apollo 11 moon landing showed an astronaut planting a flag that read MTV. “Ladies and gentlemen, rock’n’roll!” proclaimed the announcer.

MTV was radio for the video age, with “video jockeys” instead of DJs and non-stop music. The channel’s first two songs were The Buggles’ Video Killed the Radio Star and Pat Benatar’s You Better Run. It sounded like a statement of intent. The MTV generation was born.

A quarter of a century later, the music channel has come a long way. At the end of this month at the Radio City Music Hall in New York, MTV’s Video Music Awards will be broadcast live to a potential audience of 1.3 billion in the 481m households around